[vaylian]

You are completely right that the current system is nonsense. It only exists, because back in the day there was no internet. Scientists needed publishers that would print and distribute scientific results. But publishers might deny publication in their journals if they thought the science is not good enough. Thereby the publishers established a reputation system. For example, it is really hard to get a scientific paper accepted to the journal Nature. But if you manage to do it, a lot of people will assume that it is good science.

The current system doesn't provide much value in terms of printing and distribution (even though some journals still do printing). The thing that keeps these journals alive is their reputation as filters for bad science. But even that is questionable, as proven by a lot of bad science making it into top journals.

And lastly, science needs funding. If you say: My science is published in journal X, then the funding agency will think it is good science/bad science without actually trying to understand what your science is about.

[baron_harkonnen]

> If you say: My science is published in journal X, then the funding agency will think it is good science/bad science without actually trying to understand what your science is about.

Not only is this correct, but it is the origin of peer review as we know it today.

Despite what most academics assume, peer-review itself is a relatively new concept in science. Nearly all of the most incredible scientific discoveries were not subject to peer review as we know it today.

Peer review was in fact created in as a response to a decrease in scientific funding in the 1970s. It was a deliberate attempt to create credibility in order to bolster funding.

I find it somewhat absurd that the current state of peer review is considered a pillar of "good science", when not only has most of the greatest science done without it, but double-blind peer review and a culture of publish or perish has lead us to things such as the reproducibility crisis. And in general the vast majority of publish work being questionable garbage that only remains unquestioned because of a culture of fear around question the corner stone of artificial credibility created solely to increase funding.

[justinpombrio]

> but double-blind peer review and a culture of publish or perish has lead us to things such as the reproducibility crisis

The "reproducibility crisis" is that we recently realized that ~half of published results in many fields fail to reproduce, presumably because many of them are false. My impression was that this goes back as far as you care to look, and that old results are just as likely to fail to reproduce. So the only new thing is that we noticed this, which is a step forwards, not back. Is there reason to believe that older studies tended to be more accurate?

[MacsHeadroom]

It's not that older studies tended to be more accurate. It's that peers worked together in seclusion via lots of back-and-forth letters and collaboration over years, only "publishing" when they and their peer group were sure they had something worth sharing with the wider community.

This is how science was done up until some time in the 1970s. This is how real groundbreaking science is still done. The publishing prestige economy is of little actual value.

[krumbie]

And this is why it's hard for newcomers to switch to open access journals. Because they cannot easily afford not to have well known journals in their publication list when applying for positions. Because the people in charge probably don't fully understand the applicant's research, but they think they get a good sense of quality by the names of the journals

[xNeil]

So if I understood correctly, it's more about using the name of the journal as a verification of the study the scientist is doing, since the person funding them probably won't understand the research. Am I right?

[Spooky23]

It’s a prestige halo. People will answer calls from 212 or from 5th Ave addresses in NYC, because, prestigious.

[arp242]

> The current system doesn't provide much value in terms of printing and distribution (even though some journals still do printing). The thing that keeps these journals alive is their reputation as filters for bad science. But even that is questionable, as proven by a lot of bad science making it into top journals.

Just because some bad science gets in doesn't mean it's 100% useless; perhaps the bad science we're seeing now is 1% of what we would otherwise?

I have no real insight in this, so I can't really judge how useful it is, but it's not an on/off switch, and as you've stated here it strikes me as a fallacious argument.

[baron_harkonnen]

I would argue that the publish or perish culture coupled with a creation of funding focused peer-review system in the 1970s has lead to much worse science.

There are plenty of cases where good researchers can't get published because peer reviewers either don't understand or misunderstand the work being done (even Geoffrey Hinton has complained about this).

Then on top of that we have vast amount of research that cannot be successfully reproduced, and this has been happening for decades. Largely because we have created a culture of 'rubber stamp' science.

The correct publishing paradigm has lead to blander and at the same time quite often garbage science.

[tomkat0789]

You're not wrong. There was a legendary librarian named Jeffrey Beall who cataloged a whole little industry of predatory scientific publishing. Here's a quick article that mentions his work: https://publons.com/blog/bealls-list-gone-but-not-lost/

It'll be a long time before the traditional journals lose influence, but lots of the newer journals that arose were scams or ways for professors to publish what they wanted. It's a mess.

[adrusi]

It's not common for researchers to find that no journal at all will accept their paper, so it's not like there's a bunch of bad science being done that we just never see.

The result of getting rid of the reputation system of prestige journals isn't obvious. It's possible that without the incentive to get into the most prestigious journal possible, many researches will lower the quality of their research. But I think it's more likely that without the hope of getting into a prestigious journal, researchers will try other tactics to coax others into reading and citing their work, and one such tactic is doing better research.

My main concern with abolishing journals is that the need for prestige in science wouldn't disappear overnight, and instead of trying to get into prestigious journals, to only way to get that prestige bonus will be to do the social climbing to associate yourself with prestigious researchers.

[kergonath]

> But I think it's more likely that without the hope of getting into a prestigious journal, researchers will try other tactics to coax others into reading and citing their work, and one such tactic is doing better research.

Or clickbait and algorithm gaming. And social networks would be even more important. You already allude to getting associated with big names. It is already common to get one in the author list to get accepted in a “good” journal.

There are already too many papers being published on many subjects, so you tend to follow closely what comes out of a smaller community, and recommendations from the bibliography databases. Honestly, the problem is more with how research is evaluated by institutions and funding bodies than with the publishers, as greedy as they may be.

[ehsankia]

But even compared to other publishing, like books. From my experience books sell for less (both paperback and e-book), and also a significant chunk of it goes to the author. Do scientist get any of the profit from paper sales?

Also, as you mention, newcomers need the reputation given to them by journal, but I don't understand how this is a stable system. In theory, well established scientists, who give the journals its reputation, should be able to easily migrate to an open journal, and therefore make the whole system collapse, no? Do these large publication have any sort of deal to give big researchers on their journals?

[Vinnl]

No, scientists get paid (usually) by their institution. Often, they'll even have to pay to publish ("page charges", charges for illustrations, etc.), and also to make it openly accessible (although to be fair, at that point their works aren't sold anymore; the author's payment is the source of profit).

Even established, tenured scientists will often need to obtain grants and will still be judged by where they publish. Though there's also, of course, quite some institutional inertia and people just not caring, since it doesn't affect them personally. And of course, there are also a lot of (established) academics who do care.

[jonas21]

In addition, established scientists are rarely the first author on papers. It's usually a grad student or postdoc who does most of the work and gets first authorship. A publication in a top journal can literally make or break their career.

If someone decides that their group won't publish in top journals, they're hurting their own students, which probably discourages people from doing so.

[Vinnl]

Yep, excellent addition!

[ehsankia]

> No, scientists get paid (usually) by their institution

I didn't say they get paid, I'm talking specifically amount the money flow to these journals. Does the funding from the research/scientists come from the profit the journals make, or from outside funding?

[fiddlerwoaroof]

Usually grants or other funding sources: journals generally don’t pay for articles.

[Vinnl]

Ah sorry, I misunderstood. Often they're indirectly government-funded - for example, in the Netherlands we have the NWO ("Dutch organisation for scientific research"), which distributes government money to researchers and institutions. In the US you have e.g. the NIH. Additionally, there are private funds like the Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust.

Funding flows from those organisations to the researchers, and from the researchers to the publishers. And from the publishers to their shareholders.

[kergonath]

> But even compared to other publishing, like books. From my experience books sell for less (both paperback and e-book), and also a significant chunk of it goes to the author. Do scientist get any of the profit from paper sales?

One data point: we were 3 authors who worked for several months on a chapter of an authoritative book in our field. We got €100 to split. Of course, we get fuck all for our papers.

[azalemeth]

> Do scientist get any of the profit from paper sales?

No. And most of the time, if you want a paper that's behind a paywall, email the corresponding author and they'd be delighted to know that someone on the planet actually cares, and then email you a pdf, copyright be damned.

Honestly, sci-hub is the best website of the last decade; I use it every day. It works better than the publishers' websites (that I have legitimate access to). It's just excellent. It's founder should be made a saint.

[Shorel]

> copyright be damned

What? Do the journals get copyright over the authors too???

[elcritch]

Often yes they do get assigned the copyright for the article.

[azalemeth]

Indeed. The horrible phrase is 'copyright transfer agreement', which is typically a condition of being published. My experience is that the better journals are more of an arse about copyright. I've just written two book chapters and spent maybe a day getting permissions to reuse published figures, sometimes including my own (!) in other works.

[betterunix2]

On the other hand, publishers have very little power when it comes to enforcing their copyrights when the author of an article decides to make it available on their personal web page. I have never met a researcher who refused to provide a copy of a paper when asked, despite technically violating a copyright by doing so. Academic publishers know that if they start threatening researchers they are playing with fire -- their business model is already obsolete and is only kept alive by institutional inertia, and the last thing they want is for researchers to find the motivation needed to ditch the publishing companies (the technology is widely available, now it is just a problem of politics and of organizing a community to change).

[ghaff]

>also a significant chunk of it goes to the author.

Many (most?) books through publishers don't earn out their advance which is probably low 4 figures in most cases. In practice, writing books is either a hobby or it's a reputational side-gig for you day job whether self-employed or employed by some organization.

[agumonkey]

It's an important topic that I see in many places.

Old system had to certify a certain level of quality to exist due to structural constraints (fragile business, cost of production/operation). Now that the costs are fading away, the danger is to end up like bad social networks who just do whatever because it's free and people waste years until it's obvious it doesn't provide any value anymore.

[cordite]

With regard to your last point, that sounds like poor due diligence.

But they’re not expecting monetary reward with risk for issuing a grant like a VC.

[edwardwatson]

But there are significant sums invested to fund research. In many ways it's a similar transaction to the VC. An investment into 'bad' research does not help the university or funding council reach their goals e.g. to raise their own funding or contribute impactful research to science. Hopefully, they are diversified enough for the bad eggs not to matter